Roger Lea MacBride was an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 lawyer, political figure, and television producer

Television producer

The primary role of a television Producer is to allow all aspects of video production, ranging from show idea development and cast hiring to shoot supervision and fact-checking...

. He was the presidential

President of the United States

The President of the United States of America is the head of state and head of government of the United States. The president leads the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces....

 nominee of the Libertarian Party

Libertarian Party (United States)

The Libertarian Party is the third largest and fastest growing political party in the United States. The political platform of the Libertarian Party reflects its brand of libertarianism, favoring minimally regulated, laissez-faire markets, strong civil liberties, minimally regulated migration...

 in the 1976 election

United States presidential election, 1976

The United States presidential election of 1976 followed the resignation of President Richard Nixon in the wake of the Watergate scandal. It pitted incumbent President Gerald Ford, the Republican candidate, against the relatively unknown former governor of Georgia, Jimmy Carter, the Democratic...

.

MacBride was the treasurer

Treasurer

A treasurer is the person responsible for running the treasury of an organization. The adjective for a treasurer is normally "tresorial". The adjective "treasurial" normally means pertaining to a treasury, rather than the treasurer.-Government:...

 of the Republican Party of Virginia

Republican Party of Virginia

The Republican Party of Virginia is the Virginia chapter of the Republican Party. It is based in the Richard D. Obenshain Center in Richmond in the Commonwealth of Virginia.- Organization and candidate selection :The State Party Plan...

 in 1972 and one of the party's electors when Richard Nixon

Richard Nixon

Richard Milhous Nixon was the 37th President of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. The only president to resign the office, Nixon had previously served as a US representative and senator from California and as the 36th Vice President of the United States from 1953 to 1961 under...

 won the popular vote for his second term as president of the United States. MacBride, however, as a "faithless elector

Faithless elector

In United States presidential elections, a faithless elector is a member of the Electoral College who does not vote for the candidate they have pledged to vote for...

", voted for the candidates of the Libertarian Party. David Boaz

David Boaz

David Boaz is the executive vice president of the Cato Institute, an American libertarian think tank. He played a key role in the Institute's development and the American libertarian movement....

 wrote in an obituary in Liberty

Liberty (1987)

Liberty is a leading libertarian journal founded in 1987 by R. W. Bradford in Port Townsend, Washington, and currently edited from San Diego, California, by Stephen Cox...

Magazine, "faithless to Nixon and Agnew

Spiro Agnew

Spiro Theodore Agnew was the 39th Vice President of the United States , serving under President Richard Nixon, and the 55th Governor of Maryland...

, anyway, but faithful to the constitutional principles Rose Wilder Lane

Rose Wilder Lane

Rose Wilder Lane was an American journalist, travel writer, novelist, and political theorist...

 had instilled in him."
He became the first presidential elector to cast a vote for a woman when, in the presidential election of 1972, he voted for the Libertarian Party candidates John Hospers

John Hospers

John Hospers was an American philosopher. In 1972 he was the first presidential candidate of the Libertarian Party, and the only minor party candidate to receive an electoral vote in the 1972 U.S. Presidential election....

 for president and Theodora (Tonie) Nathan for Vice President

Vice President of the United States

The Vice President of the United States is the holder of a public office created by the United States Constitution. The Vice President, together with the President of the United States, is indirectly elected by the people, through the Electoral College, to a four-year term...

. This was twelve years before the Democratic Party nominated Geraldine Ferraro (whose running mate, Walter Mondale, received a similar number of electoral votes). MacBride went on to be the Libertarian Party candidate for president in the 1976 election.

MacBride attended Princeton University

Princeton University

Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....

 and Harvard Law School

Harvard Law School

Harvard Law School is one of the professional graduate schools of Harvard University. Located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, it is the oldest continually-operating law school in the United States and is home to the largest academic law library in the world. The school is routinely ranked by the U.S...

. He practiced law in Vermont, served in the Vermont House of Representatives

Vermont House of Representatives

The Vermont House of Representatives is the lower house of the Vermont General Assembly, the state legislature of the U.S. state of Vermont. The House comprises 150 members. Vermont legislative districting divides representing districts into 66 single-member districts and 42 two-member...

 and ran for governor as a Republican, and published two books on constitutional law—The American Electoral College and Treaties versus the Constitution. After moving to Virginia and then casting his famous electoral vote in 1972, he instantly became a hero to the fledgling Libertarian Party, which had only begun the previous year. As the Libertarian presidential candidate in 1976, he achieved ballot access in 32 states; he and his running mate, David Bergland

David Bergland

David Peter Bergland received the United States Libertarian Party's nomination for the 1984 presidential election. Bergland and his running mate Jim Lewis received 228,111 . He received the party's vice-presidential nomination in the 1976 presidential election, sharing the ticket with Roger...

, received 172,553 (0.21%) popular votes by official count; the actual total is likely nearer 183,000, but no electoral votes.

After the 1976 election, he attempted to found a news magazine like "Atlas" which surveys and translates newspapers published in other lands. The magazine was not successful, and shortly thereafter he sold his home "Esmont House" and left the state.

MacBride rejoined the Republican Party

Republican Party (United States)

The Republican Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Democratic Party. Founded by anti-slavery expansion activists in 1854, it is often called the GOP . The party's platform generally reflects American conservatism in the U.S...

 in 1983 and helped establish the Republican Liberty Caucus

Republican Liberty Caucus

The Republican Liberty Caucus is a political action organization dedicated to promoting the ideals of individual liberty, limited government and free market economics within the Republican Party in the United States. It is part of the libertarian wing of the Republican Party...

, a group promoting libertarian

Libertarianism

Libertarianism, in the strictest sense, is the political philosophy that holds individual liberty as the basic moral principle of society. In the broadest sense, it is any political philosophy which approximates this view...

 principles within the Republican Party. He chaired this group in 1994.

MacBride called himself "the adopted grandson" of a family friend, writer and political theorist Rose Wilder Lane

Rose Wilder Lane

Rose Wilder Lane was an American journalist, travel writer, novelist, and political theorist...

, the daughter of writer Laura Ingalls Wilder

Laura Ingalls Wilder

Laura Elizabeth Ingalls Wilder was an American author who wrote the Little House series of books based on her childhood in a pioneer family...

. Rose apparently gave birth to a stillborn son in 1910 and was never able to have children after this. MacBride inherited Lane's estate including rights to the substantial Ingalls-Wilder literary estate, including the "Little House on the Prairie

Little House on the Prairie

Little House is a series of children's books by Laura Ingalls Wilder that was published originally between 1932 and 1943, with four additional books published posthumously, in 1962, 1971, 1974 and 2006.-History:...

" franchise. He is the author of record of three additional "Little House" books, and began the "Rocky Ridge Years" series, describing the Ozark childhood of Rose Wilder Lane. He also co-produced the 1970s television series Little House on the Prairie

Little House on the Prairie (TV series)

Little House on the Prairie is an American Western drama television series, starring Michael Landon and Melissa Gilbert, about a family living on a farm in Walnut Grove, Minnesota, in the 1870s and 1880s. The show was an adaptation of Laura Ingalls Wilder's best-selling series of Little House books...

.

Controversy came after MacBride's death of heart failure in 1995, when the local library in Mansfield, Missouri

Mansfield, Missouri

Mansfield is a city in Wright County, Missouri, United States. The population was 1,349 at the 2000 census.-Geography:Mansfield is located at ....

, contended that Wilder's original will gave her daughter ownership of the literary estate for her lifetime only, all rights to revert to the Laura Ingalls Wilder Library after her death. The ensuing court case was settled in an undisclosed manner, but MacBride's heirs retained the rights.

In an obituary for MacBride, David Boaz wrote, "In some ways he was the last living link to the best of the Old Right

Old Right

Old Right may refer to:* Old Right , the ideology and policies of the Conservative Party that predated the ideological shift led by former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher...

, the rugged-individualist, anti-New Deal

New Deal

The New Deal was a series of economic programs implemented in the United States between 1933 and 1936. They were passed by the U.S. Congress during the first term of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The programs were Roosevelt's responses to the Great Depression, and focused on what historians call...

, anti-interventionist spirit of Rep. Howard Buffett

Howard Buffett

Howard Homan Buffett was an Omaha, Nebraska businessman, investor, and four-term Republican United States Representative. Buffett was the father of Warren Buffett, the billionaire investor.-Early life:...

, Albert Jay Nock

Albert Jay Nock

Albert Jay Nock was an influential United States libertarian author, educational theorist, and social critic of the early and middle 20th century.- Life and work :...

, H. L. Mencken

H. L. Mencken

Henry Louis "H. L." Mencken was an American journalist, essayist, magazine editor, satirist, acerbic critic of American life and culture, and a scholar of American English. Known as the "Sage of Baltimore", he is regarded as one of the most influential American writers and prose stylists of the...

, Isabel Paterson

Isabel Paterson

Isabel Paterson was a Canadian-American journalist, novelist, political philosopher, and a leading literary critic of her day. Along with Rose Wilder Lane and Ayn Rand, who both acknowledged an intellectual debt to Paterson, she is one of the three founding mothers of American libertarianism...

, and Lane."

Partial bibliography

Series on the early life of Rose Wilder

• Little House on Rocky Ridge (1993)
• Little Farm in the Ozarks (1994)
• In the Land of the Big Red Apple (1995)
• On the Other Side of the Hill (1995)
• Little Town in the Ozarks (1996)
• New Dawn on Rocky Ridge (1997)
• On the Banks of the Bayou (1998)
• Bachelor Girl (1999)